Due to BCS, Spanish Fort Planning Commission to take more comments on comprehensive plan

SPANISH FORT, Alabama -- Another public hearing on the city’s comprehensive plan has been scheduled next month after Auburn University’s national championship football game kept a number of would-be commenters otherwise occupied Monday night, officials said.

A public hearing on the plan, which once adopted will serve as a guideline for land use and development through 2025, was held Monday during the Planning Commission’s regular meeting.

But Chairman Carl Nelson said many residents contacted officials and indicated they would like to speak on the matter. As a result, the commission decided to take no action and set another hearing for the board’s next regular meeting on Feb. 14.

“We’re going to allow people to have another voice and we will have another public hearing at our next regular meeting and at that time possibly take action. That way, it’ll be fair to everybody that wishes to speak that may not have shown up here tonight.” Nelson said.

Nancy Milford of Confederate Drive told commissioners that she felt the public was denied adequate input during the crafting of the plan after the first preliminary meeting five years ago. Additional input from residents should have been sought, she said.

“The original citizens charrette was held in 2005. The citizens at that time sent a message that they would they would like to put natural preservation as a priority,” Milford said.

She charged that the city leaders have expressed a desire for growth through apartments, malls, and annexations, “creating a perfect storm for urban sprawl.”

She said her greatest concern, however, is what she said was the perception that political entities have been responsible for the plan rather than the consulting firm hired to do the work. “As a citizen, I felt that I was left out of the process of actually reviewing the draft changes,” she said.

Milford also expressed concerns about changes made that city officials have said were made in-house rather than by MACTEC Engineering and Consulting Inc., the Georgia firm that put together the plan.

Commissioner Maura Dismuke said they prepared the goals because the MACTEC plan did not provide them.

Nelson said that while officials corrected some verbiage and reworded a few sentences. “I don’t believe we actually changed the bulk of any percentage of the comprehensive plan from what MACTEC did.”

Milford was the only person present who spoke at the public hearing. But another resident, Ron Gibson of Brandon Lake Road, commented via an e-mail read by Building Official Bruce Renkert.

In the e-mail, Gibson suggested that the comprehensive plan include a recommendation for a master plan that would establish a program for developing the Causeway, the U.S. 31 Corridor and several large parcels in the city’s center that have remained undeveloped for many years. He also suggested that the comprehensive plan include a recommendation that water supply and sewer services be assessed.

Following the meeting, Mayor Joe Bonner commended city officials’ work on the plan and defended their handling of past meetings regarding the plan, saying the Planning Commission and City Council both endorse open meetings.

Bonner also defended the time taken by the commission to get the comprehensive plan to this stage.

“I think the Planning Commission was very steadfast in getting this job done. It took them a long time to do it. The reasons that it took a long time is because International Paper Co. brought to us the Highlands. We just literally stopped the comprehensive plan and this Planning Commission and City Council basically had meetings after meetings to accommodate that measure,” he said. In addition, when the city updated its zoning classifications, “we spent our time looking at what we wanted to accomplish on the (U.S.) 31 Corridor, what we wanted to accomplish at the big box stores, what we wanted to accomplish in certain areas off 31,” he said.

In other action prior to the comprehensive plan hearing, commissioners by a vote of 8-0 approved a site plan for a proposed restaurant/general store/bait shop at 1595 Battleship Parkway, the site of a former Exxon gas station. The approval was made contingent upon City Council giving the go-ahead to a request to rezone the property from R-1 residential to B-3 general business, officials said. A public hearing on the rezoning is scheduled a the Jan.. 24 City Council meeting, according to David Conner, city attorney.

An application for final plat approval of Stone Brooke Subdivision, Phase II was also approved. The subdivision is at the north end of Orkney Way, near the intersection of Jimmy Faulkner Drive and Paisley Avenue.